Sickels and Matt Garrioch have their first combined mock draft up. This is largely for fun and obviously holds no merit whatsoever this early on.

Quote:

13) White Sox (Matt): Man, why do I have to do the White Sox? They need help everywhere, from the top to the bottom. While looking at prep players is one way to go, there is more room for failure there. Let's try to avoid more of that. They seem to like college pitchers that are close to the majors more than anything else. A player that is deserving of this spot and fits that role is the aforementioned Marcus Stoman, RHP, Duke.

I've been intrigued by Stroman. Need to see how he holds up as a starter though. Also need to see how consistent he can be with his secondaries. Personally, I think I'd prefer Chris Beck is he's still on the board if the Sox go college arm.

The draft is about 7 weeks away, and the pack has started to separate itself a bit. Many consider the top five to include Buxton, Zunino, Zimmer, Appel and Gausman. Wacha has major helium as well. Buxton has largely displaced Appel as the favorite to go 1:1.

Myself, I'm still really high on Marcus Stroman and would love for him to fall to the Sox, but I'd imagine he goes top 10. He's been fantastic this year.

Should be real interesting to see how teams approach the draft with the new limitations. I wouldn't be surprised to see some pre-draft "agreements" for underslot 1st round reaches. This would allow teams to diversify into multiple overslot, higher talent signings in later rounds. For example an expensive "A" first round pick and multiple "C" prospects versus a cheaper "B" first round pick reinvested into multiple "B" prospects in the next few rounds.

Either way, I have a feeling mock drafts are now going to be even more worthless than usual this year.